We live in uncharted times. In most western and non-western societies, there is a sharp lurch to the right which makes open and sometimes violent competition for increasingly scarce resources the norm rather than the exception. The human capacity for consumption which ironically is a result of better and healthier conditions and better living facilities in advanced countries has outstripped the capacity for production. No amount of fertility magic in advanced agricultural laboratories seems to be able to do the trick and increase the yield. Or perhaps it is a question of poor and inefficient distribution of resources. Whatever it is, the Western banquet halls are no longer welcoming of uninvited quests and the stricken hordes from the concrete hells on earth.
Across the English Channel, the authorities turn them back and puncture their inflatables with sharp knives driving them further to the open seas. In the adjoining forests of the French Normandy coast, it is an unending battle between agents and bands of smugglers ferrying their human wares across the channel through the thick forests. In less welcoming climes, their creaking and barely sea-worthy boats are pushed away to the mid-seas and their human cargo left to face the inclement circumstances.
In America, they are openly abducted in public places and on private farms and summarily deported often in brutal and most humiliating circumstances. The cheery bouquets that welcomed Jamaican and other Caribbean immigrants to Britain during the Windrush episode less than a century earlier and the hordes that throng the New York harbor just a little over a century before, have all completely disappeared. In their place now reigns open hostility or barely concealed irritation.
If gold can rust, one can imagine the circumstances of iron. In Africa, things are even more desperate and precarious. The exponential rise in population and in circumstances of steadily increasing poverty and extreme predation of natural and human resources by a deviant and psychotic elite group is straight out of the playbook of postcolonial sadism. Scarcity and lack of adequate feeding culture often predispose human societies to nastiness and loss of compassion.
Prolonged and protracted exposure to hunger and starvation shortens the temperamental fuse of humanity and induces surges of aggressive behavior. Yet it is clear that for the moment, the old idyllic Africa of plethora of game and plenitude of fodder from the forest may be gone forever. The epic feast of pounded yam in Things Fall Apart in which it took participants two whole days to appraise who and who were on the other side of the humongous carbohydrate skyscraper will forever remain in the realm of fiction and not of actual reality.
If we still do not get the nexus and connection between poverty, social dislocation and unruly behavior, we can at least recognize the fact that the uncivil society is here with us in full throttle. It is a society marked by violent discourtesy, arrant vulgarity and a bovine lack of consideration for others which harks back to the savage state of nature. No state of human existence can be stagnant forever. It either progresses, or it sinks further into the abyss of barbarity. De-civilization has been knocking at our door for quite some time.
Now, the ugly chimp of postcolonial meltdown has arrived at our doorstep. It was a little over twenty years ago since one wrote a piece in Africa Today, cautioning the then ruler of the country about a tendency to rude and violently uncouth conduct which could lead to the de-civilization of the polity and a descent into uncivil hell. Last week, the former ruler was openly complaining about the invasion of his vast estate by law enforcement agencies to apprehend Yahoo Boys who seemed to have taken up permanent residence on the premises. As the EFCC prepared to arraign the culprits on Friday, one is at pain to determine which one was more hilarious and which one was more tragic: the complaint or the purported invasion.
It speaks to the impermanence of authority and prestige and the transience of power. The influence of power and authority is not determined by how long you can hang on to it but by the beneficial and lasting influence on one’s society. Civil conduct enhances the rational quotient of civilization and makes interpersonal relationship more amenable to order and justice. Some societies are adjudged to be more civilized than others to the extent they succeed in moderating and modulating human behavior to fit into accepted practice which has evolved over the ages and is now seen as part of their civilizing armament.
Most human societies erect guardrails against what they consider to be uncivil behavior.
England is universally rhapsodized as the country of good manners where the gentleman is expected to wear his hat and opinion lightly. No heavy-duty intolerant stuff which sets the imagination of the fickle masses ablaze and makes national cohesion virtually impossible. The Japanese and the oriental community are a delightfully courteous and well-mannered race.
The only thing they are intolerant of is intolerance itself. Their Chinese, Korean, Malaysian and Indonesian cousins make such a fetish of good conduct and decent behavior that any disgraceful behavior and dishonorable conduct is viewed with extreme hostility which often invites severe communal sanctions. As a visiting professor in Holland, yours sincerely once severely upbraided a Japanese postgraduate researcher for fouling up the wash room after a rowdy drinking binge. The fellow disappeared completely only to reappear about a week after with a retinue of oriental curios who had come to plead for him.
The main drivers of social aggression and rude incivility are economic dysfunction and spiritual deracination. Traditional African societies also erected iron walls against boorish behavior and rude misconduct. Among the ethnic nationalities of what became known as Nigeria, respect for elders and disinclination towards what leads to social disharmony ranks very high on the order of engagement. This old agrarian code was obviously aided and boosted by material clemencies. In postcolonial societies, it breaks down once there is scarcity of resources or lack of means to get by in an increasingly harsh environment. As the mother of this columnist would put it, you cannot put down a person without means for poor conduct. The demon chasing him is greater than social graces.
There is rudeness and incivility everywhere and it is an epidemic. You have rude passengers, rude hostesses, rude politicians, rude ministers, rude lawyers, rude judges, rude professors, rude diplomats, rude opinion-writers, rude columnists, rude traditional rulers, rude subjects and rude musical superstars. The problem is that rudeness does not cancel out rudeness. It only exacerbates the circumstances. This is where we are.
In recent weeks, there has been a remarkable upsurge in instances of rude incivilities and boorish public behavior particularly among air-travellers. Road rage often ends there and then, particularly among the underclass unwashed and other vagrants of the road. But air rage because of the type of people likely to get embroiled gets more publicity. It is often a fierce competition for scarce resources at the aerial level. Not everybody can own an aircraft. The class occlusions would have been hilarious if tragedy was not hovering in the air.
How do you remonstrate with a person who was only recently lifted from the abyss of savage poverty and abject illiteracy that he ought to thank his stars and conduct himself properly? He can surely not afford to be seen using his recently acquired social heft to be tyrannizing over members of the old middle class who are invariably better educated and better exposed than himself. But having only himself barely escaped the claws of the selfsame middle class in its collusion and complicity with the ruling class only a man with a greater sense of compassion and vision of social justice would pass off the opportunity to rub it in when the occasion arises as it is bound to.
Hell hath no greater fury and burning indignation than a scorned former pauper prince rise to stardom in a highly stratified society.
The story is told of how the father of the recently departed Awujale, a diffident and noble pauper prince, was subject to ritual indignities and humiliation by the Ijebu monied class just so that his son could receive their nod. It was obvious that throughout his long and blessed reign, Oba Sikiru was determined to have it back on his family tormentors by acquiring the financial heft by fire and by force. This is how class contradictions play out in a turbulent postcolonial society in a state of flux and why there is still a lot to play for and pay for.
It is only poetic justice that Wasiu Ayinde Marshal, the Fuji music idol, should find himself in the crosshairs of public obloquy concerning his rude conduct and public display of boorish incivility to aviation personnel. He has had it coming for quite some time with his uncouth arrogance and uncivil self-importance. Even his most ardent supporters have had it to the hilt with his garrulous self-conceit and indiscretions which must have embarrassed his patrons in high places. A person should rise to the level of his friends in high places rather than try to drag them under to the dungeon of sinister buffoonery.
To a barely lettered musical yokel, this may be sheer grammatical overreach, but trying to stop a train with his hands and body mass was the height of suicidal folly. But leaving that aside, how does one inform the other lady that the hostesses she had assaulted might be better educated and socially superior to her? The resort to physical violence by the Ibom Air Staff is regrettable, but that is the ugly nature of these times when incivility reigns supreme.
As soon as word came to No 10 Downing Street that John Major had been sworn in at Buckingham Palace as the next Prime Minister of Great Britain, his friend, Lord Jeffrey Archer, the irascible novelist, quickly hid himself in an adjoining washroom. According to him, he wanted to be the first person to address the Prime Minister as “Sir”. As far as he was concerned, John Major was no longer an ordinary person but the human embodiment of the British state in all its imperial might and grandeur.
Wasiu Ayinde has come a long way. His political, economic and cultural fortunes rose exponentially after he nailed his mast to the destiny of the incumbent president of the nation. Nobody should begrudge him his just rewards. He has shown character and grit in the face of danger and adversity. Let’s face it, his bucolic pride and princely sense of self-worth must also have played a role in that. In a country where musicians and artistes are notoriously fickle and unstable, depending on where their bread was last buttered, the Ijebu –Ode noble man has shown that he is a cut above the rest of the musical clan. This is probably why his friends in high places treat him with indulgence and bemused tolerance. But to whom much is granted, much is also expected. If he is incapable of self-tutoring, they should get others to teach him to a level commensurate with his current status as a cultural ambassador and custodian of our sacred tradition.
Culled from The Nation
